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On October 15 2011 01:46 DrainX wrote:Didn't expect to read this on fox news: Show nested quote +'Occupy Wall Street' -- It's Not What They're for, But What They're AgainstCritics of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement complain that the protesters don’t have a policy agenda and, therefore, don’t stand for anything. They're wrong. The key isn’t what protesters are for but rather what they’re against -- the gaping inequality that has poisoned our economy, our politics and our nation. In America today, 400 people have more wealth than the bottom 150 million combined. That’s not because 150 million Americans are pathetically lazy or even unlucky. In fact, Americans have been working harder than ever -- productivity has risen in the last several decades. Big business profits and CEO bonuses have also gone up. Worker salaries, however, have declined. Most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t opposed to free market capitalism. In fact, what they want is an end to the crony capitalist system now in place, that makes it easier for the rich and powerful to get even more rich and powerful while making it increasingly hard for the rest of us to get by. The protesters are not anti-American radicals. They are the defenders of the American Dream, the decision from the birth of our nation that success should be determined by hard work not royal bloodlines. Sure, bank executives may work a lot harder than you and me or a mother of three doing checkout at a grocery store. Maybe the bankers work ten times harder. Maybe even a hundred times harder. But they’re compensated a thousand times more. The question is not how Occupy Wall Street protesters can find that gross discrepancy immoral. The question is why every one of us isn’t protesting with them. According to polls, most Americans support the 99% movement, even if they’re not taking to the streets. In fact, support for the Occupy Wall Street protests is not only higher than for either political party in Washington but greater than support for the Tea Party. And unlike the Tea Party which was fueled by national conservative donors and institutions, the Occupy Wall Street Movement is spreading organically from Idaho to Indiana. Institutions on the left, including unions, have been relatively late to the game. Ironically, the original Boston Tea Party activists would likely support Occupy Wall Street more as well. Note that the original Tea Party didn’t protest taxes, merely the idea of taxation without representation -- and they were actually protesting the crown-backed monopoly of the East India Company, the main big business of the day. Americans today also support taxes. In fact, two-thirds of voters -- including a majority of Republicans -- support increasing taxes on the rich, something the Occupy Wall Street protests implicitly support. That’s not just anarchist lefty kids. Soccer moms and construction workers and, yes, even some bankers want to see our economy work for the 99%, not just the 1%, and are flocking to Occupy protests in droves. I’ve even met a number of Libertarians and Tea Party conservatives at these protests. So the critics are right, the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t the Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street is much, much broader. Maybe it’s hard to see your best interests reflected in a sometimes rag-tag, inarticulate, imperfect group of protesters. But make no mistake about it: While horrendous inequality is not an American tradition, protest is.And if you’re part of the 99% of underpaid or unemployed Americans crushed in the current economy, the Occupy Wall Street protests are your best chance at fixing the broken economy that is breaking your back. Sally Kohn is the founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a grassroots think tank. Follow her on Twitter@sallykohn. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/14/understanding-occupy-wall-street/#ixzz1am8qDrwv http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/14/understanding-occupy-wall-street/
It's not that surprising if you focus on fox's network news and their website it's actually news, people confuse that with the fox cable 24/7 opinion based shows which are pseudo news mostly opinions but not really any investigative journalism is done. There is a distinction frankly all people should see the separation between network's 24/7 cable news shows and their actual news affiliates.
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It's not as if the protesters are just leaving trash etc everywhere. They are actually cleaning the park, there were videos of protesters continuing to take away trash and even recycle as well as sweep up.
Heck Russel Simmons even offered to pay for the clean up of the park if need be.
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Occupy Denver has largely been cleared out. Yesterday, there were a bunch of tents and maybe close to 100 at the site. Today, there's somewhere around 30 people, no tents, and 30-40 policeman or so, most of whom are in riot gear.
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On October 15 2011 03:27 xDaunt wrote:
Occupy Denver has largely been cleared out. Yesterday, there were a bunch of tents and maybe close to 100 at the site. Today, there's somewhere around 30 people, no tents, and 30-40 policeman or so, most of whom are in riot gear.
Occupy Denver protesters have stated they plan to keep protesting, it will be an interesting weekend.
Kind of pitiful that Denver Police arrive in Riot Gear, destroy personal property, mass arrests, and close a public space indefinitely. Doesn't help the police' image, and helps support for the protests.
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@ StealthBlue I was referring to putting UK on that map that was linked 
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On October 15 2011 03:39 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2011 03:27 xDaunt wrote:
Occupy Denver has largely been cleared out. Yesterday, there were a bunch of tents and maybe close to 100 at the site. Today, there's somewhere around 30 people, no tents, and 30-40 policeman or so, most of whom are in riot gear. Occupy Denver protesters have stated they plan to keep protesting, it will be an interesting weekend. Kind of pitiful that Denver Police arrive in Riot Gear, destroy personal property, mass arrests, and close a public space indefinitely. Doesn't help the police' image, and helps support for the protests.
The space isn't closed. The protesters are free to stand around and protest. It looks like the only thing that they can't do is set up a permanent camp there.
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On October 15 2011 03:46 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2011 03:39 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:On October 15 2011 03:27 xDaunt wrote:
Occupy Denver has largely been cleared out. Yesterday, there were a bunch of tents and maybe close to 100 at the site. Today, there's somewhere around 30 people, no tents, and 30-40 policeman or so, most of whom are in riot gear. Occupy Denver protesters have stated they plan to keep protesting, it will be an interesting weekend. Kind of pitiful that Denver Police arrive in Riot Gear, destroy personal property, mass arrests, and close a public space indefinitely. Doesn't help the police' image, and helps support for the protests. The space isn't closed. The protesters are free to stand around and protest. It looks like the only thing that they can't do is set up a permanent camp there.
The space isn't closed because that fits your opinion better?
They closed the space, police even stated this.
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On October 15 2011 04:19 H0i wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2011 03:46 xDaunt wrote:On October 15 2011 03:39 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:On October 15 2011 03:27 xDaunt wrote:
Occupy Denver has largely been cleared out. Yesterday, there were a bunch of tents and maybe close to 100 at the site. Today, there's somewhere around 30 people, no tents, and 30-40 policeman or so, most of whom are in riot gear. Occupy Denver protesters have stated they plan to keep protesting, it will be an interesting weekend. Kind of pitiful that Denver Police arrive in Riot Gear, destroy personal property, mass arrests, and close a public space indefinitely. Doesn't help the police' image, and helps support for the protests. The space isn't closed. The protesters are free to stand around and protest. It looks like the only thing that they can't do is set up a permanent camp there. The space isn't closed because that fits your opinion better? They closed the space, police even stated this.
I drive by the space every day. I drove by it less than an hour ago. There were still people protesting, completely unmolested by the police who were just lounging off to either side of the protesters. To the extent that the space is "closed," it only seems to be closed to permanent squatting.
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This is impressive, and I hope it keeps going. It'd be good for everyone (global scale) should some change actually follow this.
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http://www.observer.com/2011/10/more-money-more-problems-how-occupy-wall-street-is-really-funded/
Excerpt:
More Money, More Problems: How Occupy Wall Street Is Really Funded
“GEORGE SOROS MONEY IS BEHIND THIS!” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners last week, feeding speculation that the “99 percent” agenda espoused by the Occupy Wall Street protesters has filthy-rich backers–a claim picked up by Reuters and heatedly debated in the media. Soros money? If only. Around the time Reuters was walking back its headline, “Who’s Behind the Wall Street Protests,” later revised to “Soros: Not a Funder,” protesters were voting on whether to spend $3,000 on brooms and trash cans to clean up the occupied plaza in order to avoid eviction by the city.
Back in July, when local activists hammered out the logistics of the Occupy Wall Street protest, they were planning for an little more than an urban camping trip. Committees were established to handle security, medication and sanitation. Nourishment was a major concern. Fundraising was an afterthought.
Still, onlookers are rightfully eager to follow the money. Politics have been so dominated by financing for so long, an effective movement that is not reliant on major backers seems unthinkable. Today, Republicans announced a new Super PAC determined, according to The New York Times, to “raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to defend the party’s majority next year;” meanwhile, President Barack Obama raised more than $42 million for his re-election campaign over the last three months.
Donations are flowing into Occupy Wall Street as well, though on a much smaller scale; the protest’s general fund has raised approximately $250,000, according to members of the finance committee. That’s enough to keep the demonstrators well-fed and livestreaming, but it’s not Soros-level treasure.
So far, according to members of the finance committee, donations ranging from $5 to $7,000 have been collected online, totaling about $175,000. About $1,000 in cash comes in every day through the empty five-gallon water jug at the ersatz cafeteria in the middle of the plaza and three duct-taped paint buckets stationed at the information booths. (The total on-site donations is about $75,000 so far, finance committee member Pete Dutro said on Friday, although the committee is still refining its balance sheet in advance of giving it to a CPA.) Michael Moore gave $1,000 after a book signing. An anonymous donor gave $5,000 after a fundraising pop-up art show, entitled, “No Comment,” held at the historic JP Morgan Building. The General Assembly, the group’s open legislature, voted en masse to decline a donation from music mogul Russell Simmons, who wanted a hand in helping the protest shape demands (spawning a rumor that he’d asked the protest to endorse an album in exchange for $20,000). That’s just the general fund; more has been raised for tangent projects. Staffers of the free paper The Indypendent garnered $75,690 to print The Occupied Wall Street Journal via the crowd-funding site Kickstarter; another group is raising $2,000 on the crowd-funding site IndieGoGo to send “radical barbers” and “progressive tailors” to give the protesters makeovers and stuff them into suits.
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Does anyone actually think this will lead to change?
Really? Because if it stays peaceful, the only way for it to go away is for politicians to make promises; which they will not keep(How does anyone not realize this yet?). The second option is for it to get violent, which will just lead to the police acting as an enforcement of the entire system, and either a revolution occurs(yeah, right), or things just go back to status quo.
Am I really the cynical one here? Does anyone actually have faith?
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On October 15 2011 06:08 HoldenR wrote:
Does anyone actually think this will lead to change?
Really? Because if it stays peaceful, the only way for it to go away is for politicians to make promises; which they will not keep(How does anyone not realize this yet?). The second option is for it to get violent, which will just lead to the police acting as an enforcement of the entire system, and either a revolution occurs(yeah, right), or things just go back to status quo.
Am I really the cynical one here? Does anyone actually have faith?
The goal is awareness. The more people are aware, the faster the awareness spreads. If enough people are aware of what's really going on, the change will happen.
If enough people are aware they can work outside of the system and replace/update it to remove corruption, without violence. Politicians/governments and corporations only have power because people give them power. When we stop doing this, they will lose their power.
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The goal is awareness. The more people are aware, the faster the awareness spreads. If enough people are aware of what's really going on, the change will happen.
If enough people are aware they can work outside of the system and replace/update it to remove corruption, without violence. Politicians/governments and corporations only have power because people give them power. When we stop doing this, they will lose their power.
Exactly this, I have a few friends down in DC and NYC. None of them believe that this will change anything over night. Instead they're all just trying to send a message that "hey, we're the people and we're pretty pissed off at the state of things"
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It's not as if the protesters are just leaving trash etc everywhere. They are actually cleaning the park, there were videos of protesters continuing to take away trash and even recycle as well as sweep up.
That's how it is now, now they are trying to be clean about it, it became an issue precisely because enough protesters weren't doing this before this week.
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On October 15 2011 08:18 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +It's not as if the protesters are just leaving trash etc everywhere. They are actually cleaning the park, there were videos of protesters continuing to take away trash and even recycle as well as sweep up. That's how it is now, now they are trying to be clean about it, it became an issue precisely because enough protesters weren't doing this before this week.
Glenn Beck told Tea Partiers what not to wear. Same thing.
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Nader wrote a book 'Only the super-rich can save us'. This referred to people like Soros. Nader has said that if Soros used 200 million of his money for an anti Iraq war campaign it would have been extremely easy to prevent the war.
Money is indeed what makes this world turn. I don't see how this somehow discredits them. They don't blame super rich people personally. But yeah I am sure the pro corporatism movement that hijacked the tea party and that are represented by people like Limbaugh and Bachman are a bit scared right now. They tricked the tea party into turning itself in the opposite of what it wanted to be. But now they have a more left wing movement aimed exactly at the problem. Try to twist OWS into being pro wall street and pro corporatist.
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the number 53% is full of crap anyways it's based on 2009 numbers and it's only talking about federal income tax. In 2007 the number was 38%(which is still inflated to some extent talking about the elderly) i wonder what happened between then and 2009?
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/412106_federal_income_tax.pdf
The same group that got that 47% number explains it.
However, much of the commentary failed to explain why. The deep recession is one cause — incomes are down and so are tax liabilities. But a much larger factor is that Congress has chosen to deliver large portions of social policy through the tax code.
The income tax has long used itemized deductions to encourage activities such as homeownership and charitable giving. For more than three decades, the earned income tax credit has supplemented the wages of lowearning workers. More recently Congress has substantially increased the EITC and introduced new tax credits for children, college expenses, and retirement saving. The proliferation of those tax expenditures, now totaling nearly $1 trillion annually, has reduced income taxes for
most Americans and pushed many off the tax rolls entirely. TPC estimates that 45 percent of households will owenofederalincometaxin2010(seetable)andthatmore than 90 percent of them will get government payments throughrefundabletaxcredits.Mostnonpayershaverelatively low income: Six in 10 make less than $20,000.
More than two-thirds of people who pay no income tax do pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes and about half owe payroll taxes that exceed their refundable tax credits. Counting income plus payroll tax liabilities, less than a quarter owe no tax.
To examine how tax preferences move people off the income tax rolls, TPC simulated what would happen if we remove all dependent exemptions, itemized deductions, and personal credits. Dropping those features reduced the percentage of non-income-taxpayers to 27 percent, four-fifths of whom make less than $20,000. Most would pay no income tax because of personal exemptions for the taxpayer and spouse, the standard deduction, and the tax exemption of Social Security benefits for low-income recipients.
Counting both income and payroll taxes, less than 13 percent of households would not pay tax; 94 percent of them would either be elderly or have incomes less than $20,000. Get rid of tax preferences and tax benefits for dependents and it’s pretty much just the poor and elderly who don’t pay federal income or payroll taxes. And even they likely pay federal excise taxes on gas, alcoholic beverages, and other goods.
Is it a bad thing that some Americans pay no income taxes? Some argue that everyone should pay some income tax so they have a visible stake in what our government does. Others say that administering social policy should not be the IRS’s job. However, the tax system does provide an efficient means of delivering cash benefits to low-income families without creating a new bureaucracy.
Finally, a handful of people with very high income pay no income or payroll tax. How? IRS studies show that high-income households that owe no income tax most commonly get much of their income from tax-exempt bonds or from overseas sources for which they get foreign tax credits. They may not pay taxes to the U.S. government but they nonetheless bear a burden from the lower interest rates they receive on tax-exempt bonds or the income taxes they pay to other countries. forbes also wrote something on it as well, although what you linked is more about the societal argument. Numbers do not lie, people do.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/subsidies-income-tax-transparency-opinions-tax-day-10-contributors-len-burman.html?feed=rss_home
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I wish this protest did more than just voice discontent. Voicing discontent doesn't work, especially with this movement's horrifically divided format. Politicians can just flow along, make promises and then not follow up. I understand the gripes, but blaming the rich for all your troubles as opposed to the stupid decisions of the American government is a little odd. The protest needs to focus on finding a solution, explaining the solution in such a way that it cannot be doubted that it is the best, and then taking it to the government. Both the Tea Party and Obama have already made vague promises on reforms, building up much emotion, but in the end accomplishing little. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of madness. Time to shake things up a little and try something new.
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I feel this is just first world people with first world problems .... i wish people were enraged enough to fix things they can actually change, this isn't going to change anything. why not protest the wars? they are costing billions each week of their tax dollars.
Im not for the banks, i think what they did was horrible, its just these peoples anger seems fake to me.
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On October 15 2011 12:45 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
I wish this protest did more than just voice discontent. Voicing discontent doesn't work, especially with this movement's horrifically divided format. Politicians can just flow along, make promises and then not follow up. I understand the gripes, but blaming the rich for all your troubles as opposed to the stupid decisions of the American government is a little odd. The protest needs to focus on finding a solution, explaining the solution in such a way that it cannot be doubted that it is the best, and then taking it to the government. Both the Tea Party and Obama have already made vague promises on reforms, building up much emotion, but in the end accomplishing little. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of madness. Time to shake things up a little and try something new.
Eh, the rich and the government are in bed together. You think the gov just did this by itself by accident? Blaming the gov for all your trouble is just as silly, you think they don't get bribes - err, I mean, donations?
Anyways, the solution is, voice discontent. The more people know about what's going on here, the more likely people are to vote for someone not part of the two-headed beast that people have the delusion of believing are different parties. If people don't get together and make their discontent known, the polls don't change.
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EPT
